The Aegis-7 hadn’t been destroyed. According to the "ww" logs—the black box transmission data—the ship had found something at those exact coordinates. The screen flickered, rendering a jagged, wireframe 3D map of an object the ship had pulled into its cargo bay. It wasn't an asteroid. It was a perfectly smooth, geometric monolith that emitted a localized field defying standard laws of mass.
Silas jacked the drive into his isolation rig, his fingers dancing over a haptic deck to bypass the initial encryption layers. 488122.930_52b5daef_139445_ww
The audio cut to static. Silas sat back in his chair, the blue light of the monitor reflecting in his eyes. He looked at the string again. It wasn't just a random sequence of numbers and letters. It was a digital tombstone, floating in the dark, waiting for someone foolish enough to answer its call. The Aegis-7 hadn’t been destroyed
But as the final data packets began to unpack themselves on his screen, Silas realized the official story was a lie. It wasn't an asteroid
"This is Commander Vance. The coordinates are locked. I am tying the ship's navigation to my own neural signature using protocol 52b5daef . If anyone is reading this log, do not come looking for us. We aren't alone out here, and the artifact... it's waking up."